Frankenstein in Baghdad

by Ahmed Saadawi

(Penguin, $16)

Ahmed Saadawi has created a modern monster fable that’s “funny and horrifying in a near-perfect admixture,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. In 2005 Baghdad, a scavenger who collects and stitches together body parts has inadvertently created a ghastly fiend that begins roaming a city already shattered by car bombs and IEDs. The “Whatsitsname” smells awful, looks worse, and begins granting media interviews after being blamed for a series of murders. But as sly as Saadawi’s tone can be, “his intentions are deadly serious.” In this “brave and ingenious” book, he unpacks every trauma of a war the U.S. started. The story’s momentum flags slightly whenever the Whatsitsname disappears from the page, said Rayyan Al-Shawaf in the Chicago Tribune. But Saadawi’s decision to endow his monster with all the worst traits of post-invasion Iraq pays off again and again. Every faction winds up associating the Whatsitsname with a rival group rather than recognizing it as a common foe. Instead of breaking down biases, it “ends up reinforcing them.”